Goals are overrated

I’m probably going to change my mind about this soon, but right now, I’m annoyed at goals. Goals are annoying me. Making goals can be really overrated. I don’t know how many times I’ve made goals and just ended up feeling disappointed. Every time I make a goal, I try to think of something reasonable. Like not spending money on anything other than transport for a week. But sometimes, when it rocks around, I can’t help it if suddenly there is a limited amount of tickets for a show for one of my favourite bands. Something else might pop up, like I need to recharge my phone credit because an emergency might occur later.

At the time of making a goal, I usually think, “fuck yeah, this is challenging enough, but not so challenging enough that my nose is going to fall off in the attempt”. But when these idiotic obstacles come about, it’s hard not to get upset at the fact that a goal was failed. It sucks, to put it simply.

My goal today was to clean my desk. Did I do that? No. Because the rest of my room has been a mess. I managed to clean my dresser and throw out some nail polish.

By the way, here’s something fun to do if you have a lot of nail polish that you want to throw out and if you care about the environment enough so as not to throw it straight in the trash. I find that after many years I still have a great deal of nail polish that has become lumpy, and worse – changed colour. My lovely pink turned into a sickly shade of purple-grey.

I went outside and took a few sheets of newspaper and shook the bottles like crazy. I could’t do much with the ones that were already lumpy, but I still shook them as much as I could to make the nail polish as smooth as possible.

Then I just shook and poured everything all over the newspaper in a splattered mess.

It was fun.

I guess I could have been more creative and more artistic. If I put a picture here, it might look really gross, but I’m sure a lot of other people could make something great. Not to mention, some people might be more willing to empty their nail polish bottles that have cooler colours, and hence come up with something better.

I didn’t clean my desk, and it’s still a mess, but at least I got something done and I can see everything on my dresser again.

I’m really dreading university tomorrow. Second semester starts, and I have work to go along with that, not to mention a Saturday class (which isn’t on in the first week, but my fists will be bumping gloves and pumping alright), and I’m going to the Smashing Pumpkins show on Tuesday, and James is coming along even if he’s going to miss the opening act because he has class. Wolfmother are supporting the Pumpkins, and James hates them, so maybe he’ll be okay. Hahaha.

I’m dreading university because it means more pages in my little red notebook, more writing, more planning, more organising, and more goals.

Goals. @_@

I haven’t had the chance to read anyone’s blog since I got back from my trip, and even then, I don’t think I’ve seen what everyone’s been up to. I’ve been on Twitter a lot, because that’s just a great way to keep in touch with people and see what they’re actively doing. I gave up on Google Reader because I didn’t like the way it displayed blog posts, and I’m just way out of the loop. Thank you dear readers for all your kind comments, though, I hope you’ve all been well and I will drop by some time… absolutely promise. If there’s any certain post of yours you want me to read just let me know too. :)

I think I’ll make a goal for this week: don’t make any goals.

PS. I hope you like the necklace in the post picture. I had it custom made, and the camera is my camera model. /eee

Comments on this post

Relax.. Everything is fine. Oh. I see you are not good in goals, but it’s okay. I see you’re tweet busy with cleaning your room. Why it is in a mess condition?

I never said I was “not good in goals”. That is not the issue. You completely misunderstood the point of my post. The issue is that sometimes goals are seen as feasible, but further down the track, due to other obstacles, they are not.

My room is a mess because I just returned from a family trip and we are still in the midst of unpacking our things. Nothing has been cleared up properly yet.

I find myself feeling like this ALL the time. What I find more frustrating than not achieving a goal is that rush and desire to achieve them in the first place. In the end, when I do not meet a goal, I’m left thinking to myself “all that energy – for nothing.” /bash

I guess the best think for us to do is to not make any goals, which you’ve seemed to already get the ball rolling on. Though, secretly, I know your brain is making goals with or without you XD

LOL you’re so cute. Excessively uses the word fuck to express happiness that I’m back. I missed you too. Lots & lots. Thank gawd for Twitter, so we could keep in touch and not stop talking forever D:

Goals are torturous sometimes. Me and goals (or is it goals and I).. yah, we usually drift apart quite quickly.

This post made me laugh. Like, idk if it was even supposed to be funny .. awks. But, I read that you try to make your goals challenging yet realistic, and then I read “Clean my desk” .. AND I CAN TOTALLY RELATE BECAUSE THIS SIMPLE SHIT IS LEGIT SO CHALLENGING FOR ME. I swear to gee I thought I was the only one. But CONGRATULATIONS on cleaning the dresser and getting rid of the nail polish. Those weren’t necessarily goals, but they were things that needed to be done, that got freeken done SO BRAVO.

I’m not a huge goal-setter, to be honest though. I’m more of a -progress steadily towards improvement- type of person. If I get a 75% on a test I’ll make a mental note that’s something along the lines of: “ew why are you so average do better next time.” I’m not like “THE GOAL IS GET A 90 NEXT TIME” cause I feel like goals have the opposite effect than they should on me. Instead of motivating, they demotivate cause 99.99% of the time, I can’t achieve a goal. Life and it’s bitchy ways somehow always prevent me from achieving them. And that just feels like shit /poo , don’t it? So I figure hey, let’s not have any expectations so that when you DO achieve something, it feels awesome.

Lookatchu. Getting all, artsy and shit. I will definitely experiment this newspaper nail polish masterpiece with my lumpy nail polish.

Oh god, University. *shivers* My goal for my first year of University was simply this: Hey, survive. And I achieved it, fuck yeah. So I hope that you will be able to take your second semester by storm using your superwoman powers and conquer all those goals. You say you’re not superwoman anymore, but ya kinda are: you’re in university, you’re working, you’re running a site, you still have A LIFE. Not gonna convince me otherwise.

Omg sorry this is so long. You don’t have to like ‘reply’ to anything I said in it. I just had a lot to say omg sorry.

Man I wish I could comment within Google Reader because that is the /only/ way for me to read blog posts. I hate having to click through to leave comments. lol I like your goal for this week- I bet you will go above and beyond. :D

I know the feeling, goals suck. When I have to set goals, I prefer to make little daily to do lists, so the goals don’t seem as daunting, and the smaller tasks are less of a burden. Good luck with university, I start my 3rd year (extra year when my friends are all off to uni! /argh ) of college in september, I’m so nervous! @_@ And that necklace is lovely! I’ve always wanted one like that /eee ♥

Maybe it’s not the goal then, but them time scale you set them to? I realise there’s a difference between “cleaning your desk” and say…”climbing mount everest” but at the end of the day, if your desk is clean in two days you’ve still achieved it!
Spending money is always a difficult goal, I try and do the same thing sometimes, but then your cupboard runs bare, or you break something…that’s just life.
The nail varnish painting sounds fun! I’ve got far too much nail varnish that I never use…I might try that!

We have Saturday and Sunday classes sometimes, it’s so fustrating, but it goes quicker than you’d expect! Enjoy Smashing Pumpkins! Brilliant band!

I always admired you for trying so hard to set objective goals and meet them. You always made me smile whenever you crossed something off of your to-do list. But when goals fail for dumb reasons, then it would certainly feel frustrating! I’d probably cheat myself slightly and call it done anyways.

If fact, one of my goals is to be more like you, and be more focused on my work more of the time. @_@

Oh man, you can’t just diss goals in front of me and get away with it. ;)

I think one important thing with goals is having some sort of provision where if you fail, you know it’s okay. In my experience, a goal is more something you strive for and thus something that helps keep you on track more than something rigid that you have to achieve once you set it. Does that make sense?

E.g., last week, I wanted to run 9 miles on Saturday. I had to stop at 8.4 miles because I got too dehydrated in the heat, but I feel less like I failed and more like I put it an excellent effort. It’s all about the effort I put toward achieving my goals, in many cases more so than actually achieving them.

You make so much sense. I wish I saw it more about the effort, but sometimes I just get pissed off before saying “at least I did ____!”

My fist bumps your glove. /pow

You know, this is SO funny as I just made a post about my goals I want to accomplish! Though I do heartily understand where you are coming from. Chances are good that I won’t make half of the goals I put up on my blog, though there are a few I want to make really bad.

WOW. You’re going to see Smashing Pumpkins? I remember hearing a lot about them when I was younger, they were really popular around my high school. Of course then, i was into 90’s country music and didn’t like that kind of stuff. But now, i am leaning more towards the music I heard on the radio as brief as it was. How would you classify them?

I’m always up for hearing new music /bounce

I do hope though, that you get to make some of your goals ♥

Personally, I love goals ♥ however, when you’re in the university/college season and you’re practicing :Cram. Memorize. Regurgitate. Forget for exams goals can get O_O @_@ O_O haha.

I fail at goals all the time. I make it, feel really motivated to do then but after a while I just give up. You’re far more committed than me as you had those monthly goals which you always complete 80% of.

At least you only have to clean your room and desk. I have to clean my whole flat and there’s always something to clean.

I have a tendency to set a lot of goals or some sort of to-do list. It’s very motivating to me, even if I don’t always accomplish them :) Sometimes it’s disappointing, but I don’t feel bad about if I at least tried. It’s better than if I did nothing about it. Sometimes I don’t even get motivated until I write it down, just so I can get that satisfying feeling of crossing it out later XD

I’m jealous that you’re seeing the Smashing Pumpkins! I’d love to see them live. I thought about seeing them one year, but then I totally forgot to buy tickets. Sigh, perhaps the next time they come around.

I know this is just me talking, and what I’m saying may not have any basis in actuality. I believe goals can be helpful to a certain extent, as long as we don’t focus too much on the fact that we have them. Sometimes we become too engrossed in making goals that end up too many of them, so that it becomes too much to handle. In this case, our goals become clutter. If we can set aside the fact that we have so many goals already and focus on accomplishing each goal at a time, I think it’s quite possible to get ahead using our goals as tools for doing so. But when our goals become a distraction, they are reduced to a level of superficiality from which it is difficult to redeem their true nature. It is then that we want to stop having goals altogether.

By the way, great suggestion about the nail polish! I have so many colors of polish already from all those trips I’ve been making to stores, though I don’t use them all the time. Many of them just end up going solid on me :( I should definitely try making an artwork like you creatively suggested :)

That happens to me all the time. Like I promise to clean my room, and it happens once a year? But then my room is never really completely cleaned out, there’s always something left because I can never seem to let go of my stuff. I am a hoarder. :P

Good luck with your oxymoronic goal of making no goals. :) I am sure you shall accomplish something. You are right to make it a goal otherwise nothing will be accomplished.

My dad has always been a goal person. He used to always tell us to make these ridiculously extensive goals by:
1) Figuring out where you want to be in 5 years
2) Figuring out what you have to accomplish at the end of each year to reach your 5 year goal
3) Turning the end-of-the-year goal into 12 monthly segments
4) Figuring out what you have to do today to make your monthly goal happen & write out your to-do list for today.
Seriously. He used to tell me to do this when I was in the 5th grade, like he actually expected me to make a to-do list for every day of my life. I’ve never been able to stick to lists either, so I know how you feel.

I’ve had the same goal to clean my desk for weeks now! I wanted to clean it when I cleaned my room two weeks ago, but after cleaning in my closet, under my bed and throwing away 10 bags of nonsense from theh floor and the shelves, I just stopped cleaning and never managed to get back to it (I’m taking a summer class at the moment). I wanted to throw away my nail polish, but I realized I can’t tell if they’re still good or not. I never used to keep nail polish when I was younger and I only started buying it about five years ago, I read somewhere that nail polish only keeps for 2 years though.

Sometimes I make up a goal, but it’s not actually a goal-goal – if that makes any sense. :P I toss around the word a lot. But I haven’t made any *real* goals for awhile. I gave up on New Year’s Resolutions and all that. Nowadays, I have to force myself to do stuff because setting a time to do something isn’t good enough anymore.

That nail polish trick sounds really interesting though. I wish you took pictures of it; it may look gross to some but in my mind, it sounds so artistic like an abstract painting. Or maybe I just think it too much. XD
Goals,huh. Hm… maybe I do have one in life; like wanting to be successful and stuff like that, it’s a goal too right? yeah. But goals that people usually do…like “new year’s goals/resolutions”, I find them really useless and time consuming. D: Guess I just prefer some things to “go with the flow” because I don’t have to be too tired to think about them.
P.S: Love the necklace! ♥